Berry beefy men in skirts

The Tartan Warriors discussing strategy, no doubt!

Yesterday we went to the Berry Celtic Festival and it was a real treat.  There was everything you could possibly want. There were different bands marching and playing bagpipes, and Scottish dancing, and stands for the different clans where you could buy clan paraphernalia or get to know fellow clan men.

They frequently have highland games here in New South Wales since many of the original arrivals to this country came from either Scotland or Ireland or other places with Celtic origin. These particular highland games consisted of caber tossing. and lifting and running with big, very heavy rocks, and another variation of throwing a heavy "thingy" backwards over your head, very high, over a bar, like a pole-vault bar. I think it was called "weight for height".

I can now confirm that they do wear underwear under the kilt.

There were several different bands playing and some had dancers as well.

I almost managed to join a band.

The whole family dressed up and ready for the festival.
Mom and Dad didn't want to be in the photo though.

It was also nice to walk around a visit all the different stands. There was also fiddle playing and very mournful singing.

I also enjoyed the weaving and  the one-hundred-year-old knitting machine for socks. My thoughts obviously went to my sister-in-law who loves all that crafty stuff.

Just as we had walked out we could hear over the loud speakers that there were 20 frozen haggis up for grabs. We almost walked in again but stopped ourselves. Both of us remembered when we lived in Scotland and had our first haggis. Certain things are just better enjoyed in the country where people know how to cook them (and even then it is iffy) and in that certain ambiance in which you have it.

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Another example of this is frogs legs. I liked it  when we lived in France but wouldn't go out of my way to cook up frog's legs here in Australia.

Leaving you with some photos from the dinosaur museum in Canberra. I went there last week with our son to renew his passport. No take that back, we went to the embassy for the passport and to the museum for fun photos. The passport formalities were over so quickly that we had time for some sight seeing and wine tasting and lunch in an Irish pub as well.

"A man never knows how to say goodbye; a woman never knows when to say it." -Helen Rowland

I am beginning to think it is true, since this blog entry is becoming very long, sorry about that. Here it is- goodbye!

White week

Having a white week now and again, or even several can only be good and healthy I thought. White week meaning of course that you don't drink wine or beer or other spirits for a week or maybe longer. Then I saw this poster, advertising the Temperance Movement, when I visited the museum in La Perouse and I started thinking differently. Do I really want to end up like these ladies? Hmmm! They look a bit stern and maybe not so attractive.

The reason we went to the Bare Island Fort, La Perouse, which is a part of Sydney on Botany Bay where the first ship came in, is that they had a re-enactment of the French arriving a bare six days after Captain Cook's arrival. La Perouse was the name of the French captain.

Don't let history get in the way of entertainment! 

They had people dressed up in the uniforms of the Napoleon army and also the soldiers of the British army. As far as uniforms go I like the French better but you can judge for yourself. There was canon and musket firing, and by the way this is when the expression "pull your finger out " was minted, an expression frequently used here in Australia.

Here we have the British Army.

And this is the glorious French Army. Sadly their ships
disappeared after their 'defeat' in Australia somewhere
near the Solomon Islands.

 We were told a lot of other interesting words and expressions that hailed from this time. Like "a square meal" which was a meal after battle served up on square wooden plates. This was after they had eaten next to nothing or just what they had in their little pouches. Another snippet was that the reason you call a bayonet a bayonet is that they were originally made in Bayonne, France.

Bare Island was used for the main action scenes in the second half of the film Mission Impossible II, starring Tom Cruise.  I wonder what 'our Nicole' thought of that.

After a walk around Bare Island we had our customary seafood lunch and then we had a quick walk through the museum.

Looks pretty scary, doesn't it!

We tried to take a selfie but someone took pity on us.

If you have been reading here  before you might remember that I mentioned how the birds can get quite aggressive and here is how one cyclist is protecting himself. Don't think it would work if the pelicans attacked but they never do, they seem placid and friendly.

When we came home we heard on the news that there had been a demonstration in Sydney because of the new budget.  As usual it seems to hit everybody except the untouchables "up there". We'll see what happens next.

It is glorious sunshine outside so I need to go out and do some garden chores. Until next time, be good!

Regrets

....I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention....la, la la.

Has to be sung in a Frank Sinatra voice, of course. But seriously,  thinking about it I want to "mention" a regret that I have and that is the fact that I didn't keep a diary when the kids were little. Now when I have all the time in the world to sit and think back I don't really remember too much, unless I look at photos of special events. But all those little funny things and cute expressions that they came out with, I don't remember them so well or not at all. And if I remember something I still don't always remember who said it or did it. Oh, well, that's the way it is, I guess, and no use crying over spilled milk.

Another huge regret, more recent, is that I started playing Candy Crush Saga on Fb and can't get anywhere. I see friends reaching 200 and more and I am still down there on 30 and can't budge, it is so annoying, but I refuse to buy "stuff" to get further. Thank goodness I never got into serious gambling!

I promised to tell you about White Cliffs. Well, it all started many years ago when I read in a Swedish magazine about a family from a small town in Sweden who packed up and went to live their dream, opal digging in Coober Pedy, living underground. When I told people in my art group that I wanted to go there and see it, but that it was too far for just a long week end, someone told me that you could always go to White Cliffs. It is closer and can be done in a long week-end (with a lot of driving!).

White Cliffs is also an opal mining town, but smaller than Coober Pedy with just over 100 permanent residents but more including tourists and occasional fossickers of course. It has a primary school and a pub and even a golf course (it cost two dollars for members and five for non members to play and there was a little box where you could put the money) and a motel ...underground... where we stayed.  I was very anxious about that since I suffer a bit from claustrophobia but in fact it all went very well. We stayed two nights even though I had made preparations to sleep in the car if I panicked.

Twinkle-toes?

Here I am descending to our bedroom from the star-gazing area, you should have seen the stars - breath-taking! Turned out my shoes shone in the dark which I had never noticed before, but it came in handy when going to the toilet in the night. There were no en-suite bathrooms, so you had to roam the corridors until you found the communal bathroom and toilet. For some reason I ran into a woman my age every time I was up to go to the toilet!! We became good friends in the end.


We met and talked to many friendly and interesting people who had come to White Cliffs as tourists and liked it so much that they had moved up there with their families. They had all the mod cons there underground, and the kids went to the primary school and then they went to boarding school when they were older, subsidized of course by the state since they lived in the Outback. I asked one woman about shopping and she said she was "the" expert on-line shopper in White Cliffs. She would place an order and the merchandise would arrive by postal truck once a week from the nearest bigger town about 100 kilometres away. They had four small children so I guess she needed quite a lot of stuff. 

The Dish

On the way back to Sydney we stopped in a place called Parkes, famous for the big dish. For you who have seen the movie, this is the dish! We had some fun there, me in the gift shop and hubby reading all the info in great detail and also watching a 3-D film. It was very advantageous to weigh yourself, I think hubby weighed 32 kilos on Mars.

We went to the cinema yesterday and saw The Grand Budapest Hotel; hubby liked it and I didn't dislike it. Thank God we had free tickets from our lovely neighbour. We were almost the only ones in that theatre because everybody else was there to celebrate the 4th of May, Star Wars Day. 

It is getting cold here now at night and the house is only heated in the kitchen and the bedroom, the rest of the house was 15 degrees when I came down this morning. Outside is glorious sunshine so I am going out now to warm up. 

May the Fourth be with you!